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QUESTIONER: In several discourses Bawa mentioned how divine love can control anything, even an animal. I work as a school teacher, and I am in a position where sometimes it is my duty to control the children as I do my own child. Now I have always tried to work with them with love. But I am seeing through experience that the love that I could give, the love that is in my heart, is really not enough to control them. And when I try using force or fear or any such method, it seems to work. When I see other people who hardly seem to have love, people who just use force and strength—that really works very well. BAWA MUHAIYADDEEN: That is all right. If the love is perfect within you, if the love that fills your heart is selfless and knows no partiality, if your whole life is filled with that love for all, then all lives will be overcome by it and bow down to you. But if the love in your heart is based on selfishness, if it has any anger or arrogance in it, or if it is based on racial differences, then that is not true love. Whether a child shows you love or bites and hits you, your love should always be the same. If you have a compassionate love which is the same toward all, then everyone will bow in respect to you. If you had that clear love, you would be pure. You could never become angry or hasty or impatient, and you wouldn't have the feelings of I or mine. You would not feel jealousy or revenge. When you have such things in you, that is not really love; others will not bow to that kind of love. Only when you have the perfect type of compassionate love will all lives be bound by it and obey you. Now let us look at your young son. He cries and rolls on the ground and shouts and throws things because he does not understand. He does not have clarity of wisdom. When he cries, what do you do? You comfort him. In the way that you comfort your child no matter what he does, you must show that same kind of love when you deal with the children at school, even though they might be shouting, howling, and fighting. Then they will be controlled by your love. But you have not shown them that kind of love. If you beat them, what happens? Then they are controlled only by the fear of your beating, not by your love. Whatever is controlled by fear at one time can jump out at another. The moment it realizes that it can attack, it will. Those who are controlled by love will not be like that. They will be submissive to that love, and as they grow they will continue to show respect. But if you try to control children by laws or by beating or through anger, then as they grow, those same tendencies will grow with them, and one day they will attack. This is the difference between the two loves. Think about it and act accordingly. Muhaiyaddeen, M.R. Bawa. Questions of Life – Answers of Wisdom Volume 1. Philadelphia: Fellowship Press, 1991. 57-58.
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